Belle Papier {pretty paper}

I tried to come with a card design this morning to post today…no luck! I still have a residual headache so I’m going to stick to a quick post that I know I can do! I’ve been asked a few questions lately and thought I’d just answer them in one quick post…

1. Do you ever get your desk cleaned? You seem to always be finding goodies on your desk to make into cards.  Answer….Ummmmm, pretty much no! LOL I do try and tidy up but I really don’t have any place to put everything! I just have a desk with one file drawer and two shallow drawers on the other side. A couple Iris carts and then…well, things are pretty much on the desk or stashed away.  I’ve asked  my husband to build me a buffet-like piece of furniture with three large pull-out drawers for some of my stash for my birthday. I think he actually may this year as I think he’s finally given up on me getting over this hobby any time soon! I just have a tiny corner of the family room to work in. Not ideal but I manage. Someday I’ll have a stamping room but probably not until a few of my children move out. I’m enjoying them much more than a stamping room so I’m really not looking forward to that happening any time soon!
2. Do you mail your cards with large flowers and embellishments on them or do you hand deliver them? Answer…..I do mail them and also hand deliver them. If I’m sending a card with a daisy Prima and large brads, I might wrap it with cardstock first before inserting it into the envelope or wrap it with tissue and mail it in a large Manilla envelope. The Martinique Primas (the ones I use the most) and most other Prima flowers are gorgeous but surprisingly tough and stand up well. One thing to note… bulky mail with embellishments does cost more postage. You may also want to bring the mail directly into the post office and get it hand stamped so that it does not have to get sorted by machine which may injur your card.
3. Do you find the glitter comes off when you use your Essential Glue Pad from Tsukineo? Answer….I’ve just had my glue pad for just over a week. The projects I have created wtih it, I’ve had great success. After this question was asked…I went back and actually rubbed at the glitter to check. Small amounts of the glitter will come off under this abuse but I was quite impressed with it. The glitter still adhered quite well. I know that if you rubbed at glitter that had been applied with Heat & Stick powder or a Two Way glue pen, the glitter would come off at about the same speed. I would suggest that if you are having trouble with this, try “reinking” your glue pad so that it has more glue in it and see if that helps.
4. How do you watercolor on colored cardstock…mine always buckles? Answer…I don’t seem to have much problem with that. I love watercoloring on my Stampin Up cardstock! If you are using a lighter weight of cardstock, you may find yourself having difficulties with it. If you are using the heavy Stampin Up cardstock, my suggestion would be to use less water. I try to watercolor without much water in the aquapainter. Just don’t squeeze the barrel as much. If you are using a regular watercolor brush, tap off most of the water before inking it up with color. Let me know if this helps!

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back to my usual self! Thanks for all the get well wishes! I’ll try and answer questions like these in blog entries from time to time so if you have questions…I’d be glad to hear from you.

WE’ve had the most awful 24 hours here…nothing quite as fun as the flu going through a household of seven! I’m finally able to get out of bed but wow…this has really knocked me out! Since I haven’t been stamping…I thought I’d share another quick hello card I made a couple weeks ago. Simple, clean and easy…perfect for a quick hello.

Hello Friend

For this card I started off with this fun dotted paper by Making Memories. I loved the fresh simple look of it and so I kept my design along the same lines. When I was straightening up my desk, I came across my dymo label maker. It popped into my head that it might be fun to use it to make a border with Hello in different languages up the side. I also came across some fun stitched rub-ons by Cosmo Cricket that I had just purchased from Jacksonbelle. I added the stitched rub-on scallops right along the side of the label to add a little interest. I love how the scallops echo the shape of the dots. I then decided to keep going with the round theme and rounded the two right corners with my EK Success corner rounder. To finish things off I added a little Prima flower with a pewter Making Memories brad for its center.

I’d like to announce the winner of my Prima flowers and paper Belle Bonbons, or blog treats! I used a random number generator to pick a winner from all the comments left on my Do you like Primas post. There were 227 comments in all! The random number generator chose number fifty-five! After counting and checking it twice…Rosella is the winner! For her comment Rosella wrote…

Congratulations! Enjoy your blog very much! My favorite paper co? I don’t really have one. There are so many pretty papers out there. Anything pretty I can get my hands on.

I agree! I just love pretty paper…imagine that! It’s the translated name of my blog. (wink) Rosella, if you could please e-mail me your address…I’ll get this out to you ASAP. Basic Grey was hands down the favorite paper winner with many people having a difficult time to choose. Crate Paper, Cosmo Cricket, My Mind’s Eye, Stampin Up and many others were mentioned often as well! AS for me…I’ve turned into a bit of a paper addict! Basic Grey is probably my favorite as I buy everything they make, but that very yummy Crate Paper and Cosmo Cricket and My Mind’s Eye are all a very close second! Thanks so much everyone for visiting my blog and commenting. I really enjoyed hearing from you all! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Gorgeous weather finally showed up where we are and we enjoyed every minute of it!

I’ve been having fun lately playing around with different styles of cards. Some are simple, some more complex, a lot are stamped but I’ve also been giving rub-ons a whirl. It is a challenge to step out of your usual “box” and try something different. This card uses no stamping at all. I was inspired by the fun stripes of this paper to make a fun ribbon border. I love the fresh spring look.

Daisy Hi

I love this fun Pheobe paper by Basic Grey. I just love all the colors and designs and movement of it. To not take away from the paper, I kept the overall design simple. The paper was adhered to a  top hinged 4.25″ x 5″ card  base. I cut a piece of adhesive sheet to size and then adhered one side to the patterned paper. After removing the top paper from the adhesive, I layered on fun coordinating ribbons until the adhesive was all covered up. I then, carefully trimmed away excess ribbon from the edges of the paper. Because the adhesive is so sticky, the edges are fine finished that way. I added a fun little “Hi “sentiment from Basic Grey Wholy Cow rub-ons. I added my very favorite Prima flower from the Martinique Collection…I just love that celery center and attached it to the card with a silver button brad from K & Company. Quick, easy and so much fun! Paper & Rub-ons were purchased from Jacksonbelle and brown velvet ribbon, dotted celery ribbon & stitched Olive ribbon from Starlitstudio.

 Wahoo! I just tried out my brand new Essential Glue Pad from Tsukineko! So easy, so fun! I just know I’ll be glitzing up my designs with a pile of glitter! The Essential Glue Pad is one of Tsukineko’s new Spring releases and I was lucky enough to find it at my local scrapbooking store. If you are looking for a good on-line source…I know that A Muse is now carrying it as well!

The Glue Pad is really easy to use and comes with its own refill in the package. Clean up is a breeze…just wipe off your stamp and rinse with water. The package suggests replacing the plastic inner liner as well as closing the pad lid to keep it working well. I must say, that in the past, I’ve shied away from glitter. The heating of that Heat and Stick powder and then the glitter…it’s a lot of clean-up and I’m one of those stampers who likes to get things done. So far, I really like the pad and now I just HAVE to go buy some more glitter!;)

Adorable Glitter Elephant

I just wish you could see the sparkle on this card in person…it is so cute, it makes me want to giggle! I really wanted to try out my new glue pad today and when today’s SCS daily challenge LSC112. I had this darling new Tres Jolie paper line from My Mind’s Eye. It means Very Pretty and oh yeah!!! It is sooo purdy! I managed to find some pale pink glitter in a drawer to match up with it and I was off! I just love the fun look to this card. The card base is made from Kraft cardstock and opens at the left side. I covered the card with the dotted and then the striped paper…i just love matching up dots and stripes! I had this cool new natural colored ric rak from Creative Impressions. I had a really good shop at my scrapbook store the other day…can you tell!;)

For the image I just “inked” the stamp with my new glue pad, stamped an impression and then sprinkled it with glitter. So fun and easy! To define the eye, I added a little pewter brad from Making Memories. The flower is stamped by inking the stamp with a celery and pumpkin marker. I just had to add another little circle detail. I just love tucking words around the image…I love adding little touches for your eye to wander around the design. For the final fun touch, I added a little flower from the Prima Essentials Lucid Collection (I’ve seen that before somewhere ;)). The center of the flower is the most darling little ribbon brad by Making Memories…more dots! I’m going dotty today and I love it!

Supply List:

Cardstock: Kraft, Whisper White - Srampin Up

Patterned Paper: Tres Jolie collection - My Mind’s Eye

Stamps: Wild About You, Everyday Flexible Phrases, Warm Words

Ink: Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie, Black - Stampin Up

Other: Essential Glue PAd - Tsunikeo, Prima Essentials Lucid Collection flower - Prima, ribbon brad & pewter brad - Making Memories, circle punch - EK Success, pink glitter - unknown, natural ric rac - Creative Impressions

It has been a very busy day here! Getting some more spring cleaning done and some things ready for a garage sale & mailed out a pile of stamp sets. I just thought I’d let you know, I separated  all the purchased sets into the bottom of the list to make it easier to see and added a pile of “new” stamp sets to the list. If you are interested, just click on the tab at the top right of my blog banner. Hope you are having a great day!

Tag seems to be the new blogging game! LOL It’s been kind of crazy around here and I’m just now getting a chance to play. I’ve been tagged by the following bloggers (that I know of)… Kurtis, Colleen, Trudee. This means my site is linked on their “Tag” entry of favorite bloggers.  Thanks so much guys!

Some of the instructions say to tag your favorite bloggers, some of them say to tag someone who hasnt’ been tagged. AS you can see, I have a huge blogroll of favorite stampers! Hard to pick my favorite five so I’ve decided to go with five great bloggers who dont’ seem to have been tagged yet. That being said…easier said than done! So I’ve done some searching and here are five great blogs that don’t seem to have been tagged…that I know of!:) In no particular order….

 Sarah and the Stampstars

Card Metaphors

Inkin it Up

Iris Garden

Inky Paws

Check them out and enjoy!

Do you like Primas? I do! LOL I’m SURE you’ve noticed. Especially my favorite new Prima Essentials Lucid Collection! I just adore the fresh colors…perfect for spring! I thought with reaching 40,000 hits, it was time for some more fun. I’d like to share my goodies with one of my readers. To be entered to win….just comment on this entry before Sunday April 22nd at 8pm EST. Do you have a favorite paper company? I’ve been drooling over so many of the new lines this Spring! I’d love to know your favorite. The winner will be chosen by an on-line random number generator and announced Sunday April 22nd.

The randomly chosen winner will receive one box of Prima Essentials Lucid Collection, sixteen 6×6 sheets (4 different patterns of double sided designs) of Lucid Designer paper & one package of my favorite aqua velvet ribbon. Thanks so much for visiting my blog and for adding your comment! The blog prize goodies were all purchased from Jacksonbelle’s ebay store.

I just thought I’d take this opportunity to let you know about a little boy that lives here in Ontario. His name is Shane and he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2005. Shane has suffered a relaspe after his treatment but has a wish that you can help fulfil. Shane is hoping to break the world’s record for the most birthday cards. His eighth birthday is May 30th.  I first heard about this from my oldest son James, whose highschool is collecting birthday cards for Shane. The card below and some others that I already have  on hand will be going off to help Shane fulfil his wish. I know how caring and helpful my fellow cardmakers and papercrafters are! If you could send Shane some birthday cards to help make his wish come true, that would be fabulous…here is the address…

Shane Bernier
PO Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
K0C 1N0
Canada

If you would like to visit Shane’s web-site to learn more about him and his wish…just click SHANE’S WISH Thanks for helping!

I just love this Ruff Day dog set from Stampin Up! SOOO cute! So fun! I think my fave is the little dog with the beret on his head but this is a close second. I just had to make this card and have a little fun with the sentiment…Bone 2 B Wild! I’ve had lots of soft and pretty and lots of clean and Spring-like so it is time to shake things up a little around here! LOL If you take a look at my counter…I think it is pretty much time to have some more blog fun too! Check back soon!

Bone 2 B Wild

I actually came up with this sentiment idea when I was brain-storming for a Design Call. While making a quick stop at my local scrapbook store a few months ago….my oldest son actually came in the store with me!  (Perhaps it was to breathe down my neck to make sure I didn’t get lost in there!) He saw this fun Harley Davidson tread pattern paper and wanted me to make something with it. I just about dropped…not too often he comments about anything I’m working on unless it is (as he thinks) constructive critism. LOL One thing that is kind of amusing though…Papercrafts seems to take a lot of the designs he hates, so I try to design things he is really going to dislike.;)

For this card I started off with a top hinged card made from black cardstock. The cool Harley Davidson is actually pre-embossed…I just love the texture of it. I added a strip of it down the right side leaving a large space on the left and a tiny border of black on the right. I then added a narrow strip of Sahara Sand cardstock and evenly set eyelets the whole length of the strip. I used my favorite tool…my Crop-a-dile for this. The design was actually planned with its limitations in mind…you can only set eyelets so far from the edge with the Crop-a-dile, so I plan around that. I just hate having to go back to a regular eyelet setter!

For the main image, I stamped this fun little party dog onto sahara sand cardstock and then watercolored him. I inked the edges of my paper with basic black ink direct from the ink pad and kind of swiped it to give it that edgy look. For the sentiments, I used my Dymo label maker. I love it for creating sentiments that I don’t have stamps or rub-ons for and I really think it adds to the “industrial” look of this card. The little bone paperclip I added on to highlight the Be Wild. It is from Staples Business Dept and a package of them are really fun and reasonable. The last little touch I added was some paper piercing. I thought the left side of my design needed a little subtle definition so I pierced a little bracket of holes along the left side and around the corners with my mat pack.

 Supply List:

Cardstock: Black, Sahara Sand - Stampin Up

Patterned Paper: Harley -Embossed Paper “Diamond Plate”

Stamps: Ruff Day - Stampin Up

Ink: Basic Black, Sahara Sand, Close to Cocoa, Ruby Red, Pumpkin Pie

Other: pewter brads - Making Memories, Dymo label maker, Bone Paperclip- Staples Business Depot, Mat Pack - Stampin Up, Crop-a-dile - We R Memory Keepers